Growing up, you are always told not to touch art. I love the irony of hand painted tea towels. It is art that you are meant to touch. Without touching, they would not hold a purpose.

I’m still getting used to how the dyes (they are actually liquid paints) interact with this fabric. This is 100% cotton cloth that I originally bought to learn how to needle punch. The fabric ended up not working for that so I wanted to find a different purpose for it. Hence, the tea towels.

I’m not a huge fan of deeply saturated color. I lean more towards using muted tones. I only bought a limited supply of the Dye-Na-Flow paints to test them out. There are other products and colors out there. The colors that I bought were very saturated and I tried to mute them by watering them down. My color selection did not come with white. White would have also been a huge help in desaturation.

As I mentioned earlier I was using some fabric I already had. You can by pre-cut tea towels at most fabric stores. I know Jo-Anne’s has them for sure. If you are really wanting to be adventurous, you can buy large rings of fabric and cut and sew them yourself. The standard measurement for a tea towel is 28”x28”. I would suggest finding what you like working with the best. This is my first experience and I will probably try different brands if I find it is something I want to start giving away as gifts or even selling.

The directions for using the paints are right on the label. I basically painted them on the cloth, let dry and then ironed the backside of the cloth. The heat will set the colors. Then you can rinse with cold water and start using right away. I also spread on kosher salt when the paints were wet. It just adds a little more dimension. It will pull the color towards the salt and you will get a speckled look.

PRO TIP: Practice on a scrap piece of cloth (same material) before starting on your final project. It took me a couple tries to figure out how the paints were going to bleed into the fabric.